A half of the whole
by hushedgreylily
Summary: H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. Will follow, loosely, the events of series 16, leading up to Greater Love. Not really a songfic, but a lot of listening to A Great Big World's 'Already Home' helped! NOW COMPLETE!
1. All I have is this feeling inside of me

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Spoilers: Some big ones, and I will get to the happening of Greater Love eventually.**

**_All I have is this feeling inside of me, the only thing I've ever known_**

He's almost grey when he walks back into the lounge, and he slides a sheet of paper across the table at her. He sinks into the chair opposite her, something heavy in his eyes.

_Dear Dr H Cunningham,_

_We are pleased to inform you that your application for the professorship in the pathology department in Cornell University's New York campus has been successful. _

It has a few more things to say, but it's like she can't read the words, after that.

There's silence for a long moment, and then he speaks.

"I almost think it would have been easier if I hadn't got it, Niks…"

She shakes her head, giving him a tiny smile and reaching her hand out to clasp his. His hand is cold and clammy in hers, he's terrified. They've only really just finally got their act together and fallen into each other's arms, months after the events of Hungary, which had given them such a sudden sense of their impermanent reality. She'd found herself with a realisation she needed to take her moment, and they'd found themselves colliding with each other in a way that had always seemed inevitable to everyone else.

_They'd gone out for drinks after closing a case, and she'd invited him into hers for a coffee afterwards. They'd both had a little too much to drink, and he'd got up to leave and she'd caught his arm._

_"Stay."  
He'd frowned at her, not understanding. "Tonight? I mean-"_

_"Always." she'd half-whispered. "With me."_

_She hadn't been too drunk to blush, but she'd kept talking. "I mean it, Harry. I thought you were dead, and there wasn't anymore of that time I'd always thought we had... and I don't think I need time anymore. Stay with me. Properly, I mean."_

_He hadn't said anything, just stared at her, as if the cogs in his brain weren't ticking at full speed. She'd stared him out for a moment, and then looked down._

_"I'm sorry." she'd whispered. "I shouldn't have said that. Pretend I didn't. You can leave, I-"_

_"Properly?" his voice had sounded shaky. "You mean that? Because I don't think I need that time anymore, either."_

_She looked up, shock spreading through her eyes. "Properly." She nodded._

_Everything seemed to happen at once. His hands found their way to either side of her face, his eyes had caught hers in some sort of iron grip, not allowing hers to stray, and his lips came crashing down on hers._

_That was where it had started._

"Congratulations." She breathes, so quietly it's almost silent, and it doesn't quite sound sincere. "This is amazing."

He laughs slightly. "That's what it is, is it? I guess I thought you were going to miss me…"

The joke falls on deaf ears, and the tiny smile he gives her apologizes for it.

He can't leave this heavy silence for long, though. He starts talking again. "What do I do, Niks? We… we were… _going somewhere._"

That makes it her turn to laugh. "You can't use something that's hardly happened yet as an excuse… you…" she bites her lip, painfully aware that she's possibly about to destroy what has become, in the last few months, the best thing in her life. "…you can't say no, Harry. You should go…"

There's something almost exasperated behind his eyes then, and for a split second she wishes she hadn't said it, she hadn't given him up, seemingly so easily, when her heart really felt like it was being torn out from the inside.

"Where does that leave us, Nikki?" he breathes, as if he's frightened at what her answer's going to be.

That seems like the most ridiculous of questions. He's been given a professorship in New York, for heaven's sake. Where does that leave them?

She shakes her head at him, almost imperceptibly. "I don't know." She whispers, "Can anyone survive that? We've hardly been together…" she trails off, because they've not even been together a year yet, properly, but they both know they've been almost-together for an awful lot longer than that.

"What… what if you come with me? What if you look for something out there, too? What if… there's nothing tying you here, really, Nikki…"  
She shakes her head, disappointment flashing through her eyes. "You don't get to ask that of me, Harry. This is home, it doesn't matter that I don't have anyone much here, other than you, and Leo… This is my home…" She's raised her voice a little, the anger is seeping through the cracks in her tone.

"I was just, I-" he spins on her, his voice raised suddenly, his eyes flashing. And then he sighs. "Let's not fight, Nikki. We said… we said when I applied we weren't going to let this break us."

Then there are tears in her eyes, wet and heavy, all of a sudden.

"I didn't think anything was going to come of it." Her voice is thick with a sudden realisation that she both hadn't given him enough credit, and had somehow managed to put the side-lines on what the worst possible outcome would be like for her.

He could call her up on that, what she's implying, but he doesn't, because there are enough flaws right now. He realises she's still holding his hand. He swallows.

"You think I should go? You think we can make this work, anyway?"

There's another long silence; she wishes she was going to give another answer, she wishes this wasn't everything, the rest of their lives.

"I think you need to go, Harry. You can't turn this down. This is… amazing… you were picked out of all those other candidates. We'll figure it out. We'll still be you and me. You need to go."

**Let me know what you think! This is not an easy AU to play with, but I've got a number of chapters planned out. I'm back on the I-just-can't-let-Harry-go bandwagon… Updates should be every couple of days.**


	2. Promise you'll wait for me

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Spoilers: Some big ones, and I will get to the happening of Greater Love eventually.**

**Thanks for the feedback, particularly guest reviews I can't reply to…**

**Here we go again…**

_**Promise you'll wait for me, wait for me**_

It comes around too quickly, in the end. All of a sudden they are in her bed for the last night, all his luggage cluttering her living room floor. It has only been just over a month, the job is opening quickly, they've hardly had time to think about the two of them, they've been so busy with the practicalities.

And all of a sudden, his arms are around her, their bodies inexplicably close, and it's nearing the last time.

She's never been _that girl, _but there are suddenly tears running down her cheeks as they crash around each other, and then he encases her in his arms, pressing tired lips to her forehead, and everything's so final.

"You're going to New York." She breathes, and he tightens his arms around her, as if that answers anything.

"You promised we wouldn't talk about it again, Nikki. We agreed we weren't going to change anything, so we weren't going to talk about it."

She shakes her head, wiping her eyes on his shoulder. "You're going in a few hours, Harry. We can't pretend it isn't happening anymore… and that's what I've been doing, honestly, I-"

She can't see his face, but she can hear the tears in his voice.

"You said you were alright with it, Nikki. You said we were going to make it work."

She sniffs, turning in his arms to lock their eyes. "We are going to make it work. But I'm not alright with it. How can you expect me to be alright with it? You… you're… I love you, for heaven's sake!"

She doesn't understand why the there's a smile creeping onto his lips until he speaks. "I love you too." He whispers, pressing his lips against hers. "I've always loved you too."

But there almost seems like there's no use talking about _always _now, because there'd been far too much time before either of them had had the guts to anything about it. Wasted time, it seems now.

"We're going to work." She whispers, and she's not sure if she sounds too much like she's trying to convince herself. That's what they've been telling themselves, the last few weeks; this is a test, in a way. If they were ever going to work, in the end, they were going to overcome this.

But right now, when he's just about to leave, maybe it's too much for anyone to overcome. Maybe they've been being ridiculous. She sighs a little to herself at the pair of them, and Harry's arms tighten around her, as if he knows what she's thinking.

Neither of them sleep, but they don't say another word.

* * *

There's a sort of bizarre, uncomfortable silence as they pack everything into Nikki's car – Harry sold his just under a week ago – and slam the boot down, unspoken words thick in the air. And then Nikki's driving to Heathrow airport, and suddenly everything's all too _real. _She doesn't say a lot, she's very aware her voice is shaking every time she has a question to answer, and she doesn't want him to see quite how much this is tearing her world apart. He's struggled with this ever since he was offered it, she knows he has, but she also knows that if he'd been offered this job just over a year before, maybe before Hungary, before everything, he'd have jumped at it, without looking back, and she's sure as hell not going to be the one thing holding him here. She'd rather he wasn't aware quite how much he's breaking her.

The M25 exit for the airport comes too quickly, she can feel the nausea rising in her throat as she takes the exit, swallowing forcibly, and knowing her face has turned somewhat grey.

Harry looks at her like he's about to say something, and thinks better of it, just audibly sighs and turns to look pointedly out the window. If she didn't know better she'd think he was trying to hide tears in his eyes.

They get out of the car and drag the cases into the airport in silence, and all of a sudden there are all those queues, one of which he will have to get in, cross that line she can't cross after him, and all of a sudden the dams have broken, and without even quite realising when it started, there are tears rolling down her cheeks, and she could kick herself, she really could, because she promised him she wouldn't cry at the airport. They'd agreed that would just make everything harder than it already was, and it was already damn hard.

He isn't looking at her in that moment, he's checking his plane tickets, and she'd give anything to be able to wipe her eyes, pretend this had never happened, but her hands are full, with his bags, and so they just keep running. When he looks at her, he turns a similar shade of grey.

"Nikki…" he sighs, as if (and quite appropriately, really) there aren't quite any words.

"I'm sorry." She sniffs, setting one of his cases down to wipe her eyes roughly with the sleeve of her shirt. "I couldn't help it-"

"I love you." He whispers, as if that solves anything right now, stepping closer to her.

And then she's in his arms and she's sobbing against his chest without any abandon, like she'd been a ticking bomb waiting to explode.

"I love you, Nikki. We're going to make this work. We're going to figure this out." He takes a deep breath, and threads his fingers in her hair. "I don't know how, and I don't know how long for, and I don't know where we're going to go, if there's another side of this to reach, but we're going to get there." Another deep breath. "Because it's always been you, Nikki. And if anyone could make this work, it would be you and I."

She lifts her head from his chest and looks him in the eyes, then. "It's always been you, too." She mumbles, slightly incoherently through her tears. Her words are punctuated with deep sniffs. "I love you."

He presses his lips to hers, and if he'd had the time or the mind in that moment to stop and think about a single thing, he would have noticed her lips were cold, like she wasn't quite there.

She steps back. "You need to go now, Harry. You need to go or I'm not going to hold these last few threads together."

He's white as a sheet again, but he nods. "I'll call you when I land. And we'll set up Skype, sort something out…"

She smiles slightly, something she wasn't sure she remembered how to do.

"I love you, Harry."

He presses his lips against her forehead in an almost drunken haste.

And then he's round the corner, and he's gone.

**Hope you enjoyed, and really hope you have it in you for a review, however little!**


	3. If only New York wasn't so far away

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Spoilers: Some big ones, and I will get to the happening of Greater Love eventually.**

**You're all so nice I thought you would get a bonus bank holiday update :)**

**Chapter 3, then… Thank you again so much for the feedback, particularly my really lovely guest review (about jumping on the bandwagon, you'll know who you are) – I'd love to be able to reply.**

_**If only New York wasn't so far away**_

She gropes beside her on empty space as she wakes up. She's still doing that every now and again, and it's been nearly two weeks now since Harry left. It's as if there's a moment between sleeping and waking, a few seconds in which her mind hasn't quite caught up with everything that's happened; she's always thinking, if only for a few seconds, that her hands will come into contact with another person, their head resting on the other pillow.

But things have changed, and Harry's in New York, but it still takes her moments every morning to realise that. They hadn't even been together very long, and all of a sudden it's like he's never really been in her bed, ever. He's always been in her heart; he's been in her heart for longer than even she can remember now, but it's almost like nothing ever came of it. Almost like she's still living in the world where _he doesn't have a clue _she feels like that.

Every time she looks in the mirror, she gives herself a little ironic smile. Because she doesn't look like another half of her is more than 3,000 miles away. She doesn't look like she feels – like she's not quite all of herself there anymore.

The first few days, they spoke on the phone more than once a day. It wasn't until Harry spoke that this changed, Nikki would never have altered anything, starting to thrive on the desperate, hopeless phone calls.

"_I start work tomorrow, Niks, I… I think I just need to settle in, I think I need to cut myself off from home for a bit… I'll speak to you again on Friday?"_

She hadn't been able to answer him for a few long moments, all her words catching in her throat. She'd felt betrayed when she'd finally acquiesced and heard the dialling tone, thick in her ear. She hadn't slept that night.

Yet when she'd heard his voice on the Friday, everything had seemed to make more sense. Harry's on the other side of the world, and she doesn't feel like she can reach him when she speaks to him anymore. She's loathe to admit it, but she would have loved him to have hated that first day at the job, she would have loved him to come almost straight home to her, having realised he made completely the wrong decision.

But he loves it, and his voice was so animated, so full of enthusiasm, she couldn't even bring herself to wish it was any other way.

She didn't sleep that night, either. The cold realisation that he was _happy, _or happy enough, without her.

She couldn't breathe.

* * *

Things in the big apple aren't as he expected them, though he isn't really sure what he'd been expecting, it had all seemed so sudden. From the moment she had said _you can't say no, _it had been some kind of blur. And all of a sudden he's rolling over in an empty bed, waking with his arms wrapped around a spare pillow instead of a beautiful blonde, drinking coffee instead of tea. He hardly has time to stop and think about it, it's been like his life is happening around him.

He'd needed to stop talking to her for a few days, the days he started working. Because his heart was breaking every time he heard her voice – you could hear her gritting her teeth and trying to sound less like she was crying – and he didn't know how long he'd be able to keep doing this. He knows it was selfish – but for a few days he'd needed that clean break.

So he'd left her thousands of miles away until Friday, and gone into Cornell to stand in front of a lecture theatre full of medical students, judging eyes and bad hangovers.

And he'd loved it, despite everything, despite Nikki curled up, tear-stained in her empty-feeling flat in London, despite the empty desk at the Lyell Centre (and not his desk, either, he's sure Nikki's at his desk), despite everyone using words like _pants _and _takeout. _

It still doesn't make a lot of sense to him, but he feels like he's in the right place. The concept of the right place being so far away from Nikki, seemingly the other half of his heart, doesn't make any sense at all, but he figures he'll just take each day as it comes.

And so he's here now, waiting for her face to appear on his computer screen. When her face appears, her eyes are slightly red. She's been crying; it's not so obvious anyone would have noticed, but he's been able to read that face for years; she's been crying.

"What happened?" is all he asks; they're so far beyond words sometimes.

She shakes her head. "Just a difficult case, that's all. The victims were tortured… nothing we haven't seen before, I just-"

"It's difficult every time. I know. How's Leo holding up… the new people?"

She sighs, and twirls a blonde curl through her fingers. "I take it the hardest, you know that, I always have done. Everyone's alright, I think, though you wouldn't really know with Jack…"

"But you're getting on with these new people, right?"

She shakes her head slightly. "It's not the same, Harry, but they're lovely. You need to meet Clarissa, when you come visit, she's got a sense of humour to rival yours…"

_Visit. _That doesn't sound right. Like he doesn't really understand how on earth time could have gone so quickly, and talking about him going back to London, that was a _visit, _now.

"Still enjoying yourself?" she asks, her voice hardly catching at all – she's getting better at this.

"It's different, Nikki, but right now I think it's the right job for me…"

She mutters something, which he thinks is quite possibly _but not in the right place_, but he doesn't react. "I'm settling in." he qualifies, but somehow it falls flat.

She smiles anyway.

"I love you." She breathes, so quietly he's not sure for a moment whether it is what he's heard, but looking into her eyes, even past the thousands of miles of cyberspace, onto that Skype screen, he's able to read that truth.

"I love you too."

Like that helps anyone, fixes anything, sorts anything out about how long they're supposed to be powering through, caught in this sort of nowhere in their relationship, living in different continents.

* * *

Weeks pile up, and things suddenly have been happening for so long they almost feel _normal. _They talk for about an hour every couple of days, and they both discuss everything and never really say anything, and everything slips into a stalemate. It almost feels like someone's put the brakes on time altogether, they don't quite feel like it's ticking past, not actually being in the same room, not _touching _one another's skin in weeks, which turn into months.

And then, when she says, "I was thinking I could come stay for a few days, over bank holiday weekend… that sound alright… I know you don't have the bank holiday, but there's still the weekend…" his heart catches in his throat, because it sounds like a heavenly plan, but he doesn't trust himself to keep pretending this is all alright with her in New York, in his arms.

**Coming up next: Nikki heads to New York!**

**Hope you enjoyed this chapter, would love to know what you think!**


	4. I promise the city won't get in our way

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Spoilers: Some big ones, and I will get to the happening of Greater Love eventually.**

_Thanks again for the reviews, and special thanks to my guest reviewer (bandwagon seat02), who leaves such lovely reviews! My reply is to say thanks, glad you're enjoying it, and hope you like what's coming up…_

**I was looking forward to writing this one… It's still angsty, but I've tried to make it a little lighter, hope I've succeeded.**

* * *

_**I promise the city won't get in our way**_

She feels like she could sleep for about a week when she finally gets off the plane (it was delayed take off at Heathrow, and then delayed circling to land above JFK), but she powers on through the airport, smiling and wondering if she even looks remotely like her passport photo when she's this tired, and her suitcase is almost the very last to emerge. She managed to find one with wheels, that's something, she thinks as she pulls it through the long walkways, her legs feeling like they're ready to give out underneath her.

That all dissolves, figuratively, when she rounds the corner and Harry's stood among the taxi drivers, holding a placard with only a wide smiley face drawn on it. She could practically have run towards him across the airport in that moment, if she didn't have the suitcase in her hand, and enough sense not to leave baggage and run in a major airport.

She speeds up, anyway, and within what seems like seconds she's in his arms, her face buried in his neck, and he's stumbling and laughing and kissing her hair all at once, and she can't quite remember how she's spent the last three months without him. He pulls back and holds her at arm's length, seemingly running his eyes up and down her body, examining her, a smile widening on his lips.

"God, I love you." He murmurs, and presses his lips against hers with an almost desperation.

She can't help smiling and wrapping her arms around his neck, her heart fluttering. Until she has to leave him at this airport on Monday evening, this is going to seem like back to normal. Like nothing's ever changed.

They get a cab back to Harry's apartment, because that's what his life's like now, and they sit close and keep their fingers laced in the back of the cab. When they get in the front door, however, the door clicks shut behind them, and she's starting to walk through into his kitchenette, admiring the little apartment, but he slams her against the wall, a darkness in his eyes that she swears has just appeared.

Suddenly, his heavy breathing, dark eyes and the heat that seems to be radiating off him catches up with her, and she feels a stirring at the base of her abdomen, her own breath hitching, as she leans her head back slightly against the wall, loving the feel of him totally entrapping her, after so long apart.

His lips crash against hers with a ferocity, a hunger, she hasn't experienced in months, and that seems to seal the deal. She realises in that moment that she can't remember ever _wanting him _this much. She tastes blood as her teeth catch in his mouth, and she feels his hands sliding up under her camisole, running like hot irons across her skin, burning their path. Her own hands seem to be operating entirely of their own accord, but they've found their way to the belt buckle of his jeans, and she can feel him through the denim; he needs her as much as she needs him right now.

His mouth seems to be snaking down her throat, and she can't breathe.

And then he's lifting her off the floor, swinging her legs around his hips, and they're moving – she assumes to his bedroom. He crashes her between pillows, she feels those talented fingers on the zip of her own jeans, and she can't think anymore.

* * *

He traces fine circles on the creamy expanse of her back as she lies on her side, in front of him, between his sheets, dozing intermittently. His fingers may not feel like burning coals anymore, but they still make her skin tingle slightly. They still feel a little warm.

"I've missed you." She whispers, lacing her fingers through one of his hands and pulling it around her, over her shoulder. He presses his mouth to the nape of her neck gently, sighing.

"I've missed _you._" He responds, and they both seem to collectively sigh. There are a thousand unsaid things in those moments, because there's always been a sell-by date on how long they can make this work, how long they can pretend they can make this work, and they both know it.

But neither of them are ready to acknowledge any impossibilities, neither of them are ready to concede to defeat. Neither of them are that kind of person.

She rolls over on his mattress, fixing her lips to his. "I didn't know I could miss anything this much…" she murmurs, stroking her fingers on the side of his face.

"Sex, or me in general?" he retorts with a chuckle, and she can't help but smile.

"Oh, definitely just sex." She laughs, "You, I'm not fussed on…"

An eyebrow raises and he pulls her slightly closer. "Don't know why you haven't been having sex with the whole Metropolitan police force, then, whilst I've been away… or have you made your way through all of them and none of them will have you back?"

She slaps him, gently, giggling, at that. The raised eyebrow soars higher. "Did you just spank me?"

"And if I did?" her voice is breathy and low, suddenly.

He returns her slap on the back of her thigh, and warmth is pooling between her legs and eyes are darkening, almost immediately. They collide with heat and spice and desire.

* * *

They spend most of the weekend in bed. He'd promised her he'd take her around the sights of New York, but once she got there, between his sheets, it seemed silly to leave. They order in, eat food off each other's skin on his bed, and they don't feel in the slightest like they're wasting any time. On the Bank Holiday Monday he has one lecture in the morning, and she sleeps in, and then they do take a walk in Central Park with two coffees from the little coffee shop on the corner he's found in the mere weeks he's been there. _"I miss tea." Nikki moans, pouting slightly, "They don't know how to do tea, the Americans…"_

And before they know it, he has to take her back to JFK airport, and there are tears running down her cheeks again – she's beyond trying to hold them in, now. He presses his lips to hers, one last time, almost pitifully, and she breathes "We'll do this again soon, right?"

He nods, gritting his teeth, because he's not beyond trying to hold tears back. "Soon." He promises.

And as she walks away, wiping her eyes fiercely, after a last hurried murmur of _I love you _on both sides, she muses that it feels more real, now. Leaving him somewhere is worse, somehow, than letting him fly away.

**Hope I didn't break too many hearts this chapter! Would love to hear what you think **


	5. Sometimes we just don't get to choose

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Right, brace yourselves. The events of Greater Love are happening (SPOILERS). Get the box of tissues.**

_**Sometimes we just don't get to choose **_

He can't explain it, and he wonders, afterwards, if it was never really anything, but for some unknown reason some bizarre dread twists in his gut as he wakes on Sunday morning to the phone going off.

With hindsight, people will say, and he'll think that it was something to do with a phone call in the early hours of the morning, expected to be an emergency, but in reality it's a Sunday morning, he was out late on a work social the night before, he has no idea what time it is when the phone wakes him up.

The caller ID's Nikki, so he answers straight away.

"Morning-" he starts, ready to start grumbling about the beginning twinges of a hangover, but she cuts him up right away, and he can hear the tears in her voice.

"It's Leo, Harry. Leo's dead."

He doesn't say anything, because what do you say, to something like that? It doesn't make sense, in his mind, right then. He'd been worried, worried from the moment she'd told him her and Leo and Jack (who he still hasn't met) were going to Afghanistan, but he'd been worried about Nikki, as he had been nearly every day since he met her, not worried about Leo. After Leo had pulled through against all the odds a few years ago, during the Connelly case, after he'd been ready to see the monitor flat-line in the hospital, he'd been reassured (falsely, it seems now) that Leo was a constant in his life, and even the concept of Leo not being there anymore wasn't a possibility.

"Harry?" she sounds like a child, in those seconds, and he can almost _see _her, tears streaming down her face, hands shaking.

"What… what happened? Are you alright?"

That triggers another sob. "I'm… I'm fine… that's what he was doing… he was with…" choke, sob, "… he had a bomber, and he was walking him away… walking him away from me, from Jack, from Fawsia…"

He grits his teeth, shock washing through his body, because he can't make any sense of this, not right now. And she sounds like she's ready to break, and she's still in bloody Afghanistan, and right now he has to think about Nikki, not about what she's telling him. If both of them break at the same time, who puts the pieces back together?

"Nikki, you need to breathe." He half-whispers, and there's a firmness in his voice that surprises him slightly. "You need to keep breathing, and you need to get out of there."

"We're flying out this evening… I… Harry, he can't be gone… he just can't… I… I think I need you, right now…"

He takes a deep breath. "I'll be in London by the time you get back, I'll-" he can't think, "I'll get the first flight I can… you just get home."

He just hears some sniffles and a few whimpers for a moment, and then, "Jack'll make sure we get home. He held me back, Harry… in the last minute, I saw what Leo was doing… I knew what he was doing, I screamed, and was going to run, but Jack held me back…"  
He makes a mental note to, some time later, when all of this is making more sense, offer all the thanks you can offer a man for keeping the love of your life alive.

"He saved me, Harry, he knew what he was doing, he knew where he was going, I just can't-" She trails off, louder sobs travelling down the phone line, and Harry realises he's shaking, and he sinks into the carpet.

"You just get home, Nikki, I'll be there when you get there… I don't… there isn't anything I can say…"

A loud sniff. "I know. I just – I just needed you to know. I… you knew him longer than me. Jack's only been here five minutes, really, I can't imagine he understands in quite the same way…"

_I don't understand. You can't understand something like that, _he wants to say, but he says nothing.

"I love you." She whispers, as if it's something of an afterthought, but it's still some sort of explanation as to why he should be able to make this impossibility right.

He shakes his head slightly. "I love you. And you're alright. Just get home, safe, alright?"

"He was like my father, Harry, he was more than my real Dad ever was, I just can't-" there's something of another sob, and then he hears voices in the background. "I have to go, Harry. We're boarding a plane. I love you… I-"

"I'll see you." He murmurs, "I'll be there when you get home. I love you too."

And the dialling tone's thick in his ear. He drops the phone, and all of a sudden it's all catching up with him. He sprints to the bathroom and makes it to the toilet just in time, before he's violently sick.

It's only when he's been sick and he's cleaning his teeth he looks in the mirror and realises there are tears streaming down his face.

* * *

He gets there before she does, and she still keeps her spare key in the same place, under that same plant pot, so he lets himself into her flat, sinks into her sofa, and just puts his head in hands. He's not so unable to comprehend what's happened anymore, and he thinks he preferred it when he could make less sense of it. He's been in the air for seven hours, sitting in complete silence (luckily he had an almost instant sleeper next to him) thinking about those words Nikki had said when he answered the phone, and that both seems like forever ago and in the last minute. He can't wrap his head around it fully, still, but it seems more real. Horrifically so.

He hears the door go, and he forces himself to stand, call something out, so she knows he's there.

She collides with him, moments later, clutching at every part of him she seems to be able to find, her floods of tears soaking into the fabric of his clothes. And then he's the only thing holding her up, and there are a few silent tears running down his cheeks, too, and everything, in that moment, feels hopeless.

**Apologies to any broken hearts! It will always be one of the biggest issues I have with Tom Ward leaving, we needed to see how Leo's death affected Harry, and I challenge the writers not to have had it bring Harry and Nikki together! But anyway, things happened differently. Sorry for all the angst and tragedy in this chapter, I can't promise the next one will be much better, but after that, we'll start cheering up!**


	6. Counting backwards the days

**Apologies, again, for the happenings of the last chapter. Though maybe you should take that up with William Gaminara and the SW writers, because it wasn't me who started it! **

**I've got my own box of tissues for the following chapter, Nikki's eulogy was the most heart-breaking thing for me in Greater Love. I hope my eulogy's alright, I based it on the scripted one (I had to watch that again and note it down, I felt like I was torturing myself). But it's different, too, because I'm in a whole different world, at the end of the day, in this fic.**

_**Counting backwards the days**_

"Ready?" he whispers, and she has to stop herself from shaking her head, because she's never going to be ready, not for this. She gives him the slightest nod, and thankfully, he's Harry, so he holds out his hand. She laces her cold, clammy fingers with his like a lifeline.

They shouldn't be here, not today, not any other day for years and years to come. Leo's funeral. If her heart wasn't breaking in her chest she'd maybe be laughing, because this whole thing isn't supposed to happen. This whole thing is ridiculous.

He lets her tuck an arm through his as they walk down the path to the church, and it's large, but they both suppose that's right, he touched so many people – the church will be teaming.

And it is, within the next ten minutes, it starts filling beyond the pews. Nikki has to bite her cheek and wrap her fingers around his again, because this happens, when someone dies young, and it just isn't fair, that that would happen to Leo. And if she thinks too hard about that she can feel the nausea rising in her throat, and she won't be able to say everything she needs to say, she won't be able to stand up and read that eulogy she and Harry sat up all night the night before writing. And she needs to do that. It's like a last line under something, some sort of finality.

Before she can even blink, she feels, she's standing in front of all those people, and all she can hear in the huge church is her own, tiny, insignificant little voice; she wants to cry, because all of a sudden eulogies seem stupid, like they're trying to convince everyone that what's happened is alright, like everything's going to be fine. She wants to cry, and the only thing holding the tears in and her two feet on the ground, it seems, is Harry, sat right in front of her.

"Leo Dalton taught me everything I know. He taught me about the dead, and he taught me about the living, because he knew a lot about life. I think… we think-" she gives Harry the tiniest of smiles, "-that at the end of the day, Leo learnt a lot of what he knew about life from the dead. He knew that you can never be quite gone, you never quite leave. So long as you're loved. So long as you've helped people, you've loved people, you've been needed. He helped so many. He helped people with his last few moments, he saved people, even. And he loved; he really loved. Maybe we should find some beauty, there, because I don't think he was ever going to be able to love anyone again as much as he loved Theresa and Cassie, his late wife and daughter, and he's with them now. He can be loved back by his most precious again. And he was needed. He was very needed. I needed him-" she chokes on the seed of a sob for a moment, "-he was like a father to me. There won't ever be anyone in his place. And because of all that, because he always helped people, because we needed him, because he loved, and was loved… he won't ever be gone, not completely. Because, as he told me, not that long ago, in fact, what survives of us is love."

She feels as if she's ready to fall, in that moment, but then she's taking a shuddering step back down to the seat beside Harry and he's tucking his arm around her, shuddering himself, folding her into his side as if that'll solve anything – as if he's trying to hide her from the world.

The vicar says something else, and they sing a couple of hymns, but it might as well all be happening around both of them. It doesn't feel real, and it isn't getting any more realistic.

* * *

They bury him next to Theresa and Cassie, and that's one of the hardest things, Nikki thinks, after what she said, after how strong Leo'd been struggling through it all those years ago – she has to let go of Harry's hand, strangely, when the coffin's lowered into the ground. Like she has to prove to herself that she's still standing, as Leo sinks next to his wife and daughter – finally, in a way – like she has to prove she can handle it.

She takes his hand again after she's thrown the first rose onto the wood, her hand surprisingly steady as she pitched the flower. He tosses his own rose after a few people, and the vicar's saying something again, something about God, and heaven, and reunion with Cassie and Theresa, but they're not really hearing it. It's all some kind of white noise.

Slowly, people bow their heads in the direction of the grave, murmur something under their breath, put their hand on their chest, around their heart, and fan out, near silence turning into quiet voices as they peel away.

Harry and Nikki keep standing there, not moving, hand in hand, until they're almost the last people there.

Janet's standing a little further back than both of them, pale and her eyes bleak, but they're not noticing anything, not right now. She puts her hand over her mouth to quell a sob, let it slip away in silence, and then she blinks a few more tears down her cheeks.

"Goodbye, Leo." She breathes, and turns, and walks away, as if he was never the huge part of her life he had been.

Clarissa turns her chair in almost regal silence and starts to move away, and Jack follows, without a word, leaving only Harry and Nikki on the graveside.

Slowly, he wraps his arm around her, tucking her into his side, pressing his face to her hair.

"You did great, up there." He breathes, and she knows what he means. "I was so proud of you. He would have thought what you said was beautiful."

That does it. She's been so good, managing to keep the tears in, in public, nearly all day, but suddenly the thought of Leo watching her from somewhere else, now, the thought of him being utterly unreachable, forever distant, breaks her. She cracks, then, feeling like his arms are the only thing holding her together. She buries her face in his neck, and he dutifully strokes her hair, like he'd always been ready for it.

"It's not fair, Harry, it's not fair…" she whispers, hating herself for both the tears running across her skin and the almost childish mutterings. "He… he didn't deserve this… he…" she trails off, seemingly spent, for at least a moment, and he tightens his hold slightly, and thanks Leo, God and the universe that at least he's still got her, living, breathing and in his arms.

**Again, please accept my apologies! We'll start working towards a brighter future now, I just wanted to handle how my Harry and Nikki in this fic struggled with the terrible happenings of Greater Love. **

**Please review, I love your feedback and value your opinions, constructive criticism is always welcome!**


	7. You say that it's hard standing still

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Spoilers: Some big ones, and I will get to the happening of Greater Love eventually.**

* * *

**Thanks again for all your feedback, hope you enjoy the next chapter. Although there's a bit of an angst overload at the beginning, things should be starting to look brighter…**

_**You say that it's hard standing still**_

She doesn't know how she's supposed to cope with this, because he's only been here a week and Harry's leaving again, and he's not leaving the same place and the same person, it seems, as he left once before. Because Leo died, and the whole world came crashing around her, but Harry was here, from the moment she got back in her flat – he's essentially been holding her up. And now he has to go back, because New York's his home, he doesn't stay here long, not anymore, and she doesn't think she's ever been as alone as she's about to be.

The atmosphere at the airport seems more sombre than it was the last time, even. Harry's loathe to leave Nikki like this, she's white as a sheet, and this time she isn't crying, but somehow that's worse. He thinks maybe, with everything that's happened in the last weeks, she's run out of tears to cry.

She's waiting with him by the hand luggage scanners, and any minute now he's going to have go on through, any minute now there aren't going to be any minutes left. They don't say anything, and that seems more hopeless than if they had a thousand heart-breaking things to say, because they're in their last minutes on the same continent in God knows how long, and you'd think they'd have a thousand things to fill the silence. You think they'd have a thousand words to say. But the silence seems to echo between them, loaded with the large gaping hole Leo's death seems to have made in both their lives, and the unspoken inevitability, as it seems in that hopeless moment, that this can't go on forever.

In the end, as time ticks forward, unwanted, into that last minute, he only presses his lips roughly against hers and whispers _I love you_ before turning away and walking through, not even giving her a chance to reply.

Everything that's happened has taken its toll on both of them, and it's beginning to show. Not just in themselves, either, but the shaky foundations this relationship is still standing on seem to be crumbling.

* * *

She sits in her car, afterwards, and almost wills the tears to roll down her cheeks – but they don't seem to want to come out. She feels almost hollow, like she's disappearing inside, and she can't make her whole body respond all this as much as it should.

In the end, she sighs and starts the engine.

She doesn't go home, not yet. She's gotten so used to, despite the terrible situation, having Harry between those four walls again, she's not sure she can stomach her empty flat quite yet. She goes, instead, to the Lyell, and sits in Leo's office, in Leo's chair, turning the chair side to side aimlessly and wondering, both in anger and depression, when they'll be changing his office, getting someone new in. Because things will change then. Right now Leo's in every corner, in the old chair she's twisting on, in the pictures stacked up on the windowsill, of Theresa and Cassie, of Leo and Theresa, of her, Leo and Harry, of her, Leo, Jack and Clarissa, and just of her and Harry.

She stops then, for a moment, looking at the photo of her and Harry. Leo'd always had an eye for the pair of them, from long before either of them could ever see it, and that's more obvious in this photo than it would have been in most. They're looking at each other, there's a laugh on Nikki's lips, and there's something close to adoration in Harry's eyes.

She realises with a jolt that that photo was taken before Budapest, before everything imploded.

It had always been there, and somehow she hadn't seen it.

And then, with increasing nausea, she thinks about where they are now. Because maybe they need to stop pretending. They can't be the two of them – not even those people, in that photograph, blissfully unaware of their feelings for one another – on separate sides of the world. And maybe they need to realise that.

* * *

Harry sinks into his sofa when he finally gets back into his apartment, hours later. He just drops his bags by the door and sinks into the black leather, leaning slightly on one of his hands.

Everything seems so much more finite, now. Everything has a time limit, a shelf life, and the scary part of it is that no one knows how long it'll take to reach.

The words in Nikki's eulogy are suddenly crashing around his ears. _Because he always helped people, because we needed him, because he loved, and was loved. _

He wonders, and then doubts, ever so quickly, if he'd be remembered and missed like Leo. He's sure he wouldn't be, within seconds, he can't imagine touching that many lives, touching that many hearts.

In the back of his mind, as if it's a truth reluctant to reveal itself, forms the thought that he doesn't need to touch as many hearts, he's got the heart of the woman he's always loved.

And then there's the dawning realisation that maybe the woman he's always loved, the love of his life, could slip away with ease. She's so far away, he's been asking so much of her for almost a year now, really, would anyone blame her if she couldn't do it anymore? Would anyone judge her for having to step away? Maybe the truth of the matter is that he can never have any hope of touching that many lives, touching that many hearts, if he's not where he's loved, and not really where he's needed.

Maybe he ought to give himself some sort of ultimatum. Maybe he ought to realise that life's finite, no one's going to live forever, maybe you need to be wherever's best for you.

Maybe he needs to go home.

* * *

He hands in his notice to Kendall in HR the following day. She looks up, slightly bemused, as if she never actually expected anything like this to happen, as if the job she'd signed up for was to sit behind a HR desk, smile sweetly at everyone walking past, and never actually deal with anything.

"You been offered something better, Prof?" she asks him in her slight twang, the remnants of an accent from a childhood in Queens.

He shakes his head, giving her a small, bemused smile, as if laughing at himself. "No. Nothing, actually. I'm relocating."

"New York not for you?" she's chamming on gum, "Some people think it's too busy, better off somewhere out of the lights…"

"No, I think it could have been for me. And this job… I just… I need to go home…"

She opens her mouth and then closes it, as if she'd bitten back her reply, as if she hadn't found anything to say in the end.

He heads out, a slight smile creeping onto his mouth, and, he muses as he gets on the Subway, it's possibly the first real smile in weeks.

* * *

The following weeks he has to work out, due the terms of his contract, are hard. They start talking on the phone every other day, but conversation topics are becoming more and more distant, and neither of them can seem to force any happiness into their voice.

He doesn't want to tell her he's coming home, he wants to surprise her, he wants to see that real smile back on her face, not just imagine it. But with every few days, every near-forced conversation, he begins to wonder whether he should tell her. He starts to fear he's losing her, and to lose her in the final weeks before he gets home would be a new level of cruel.

Phone-calls peter out a little further, down to a couple of times a week, and they both feel like their whole relationship is balancing on a knife edge, ready to fall and crumble at the slightest motion. But they don't say anything, neither of them come up with anything to say. The teeter on the knife edge, like a tightrope, in silence.

* * *

Finally, he works his last day. He'll be sad not to have a teaching position anymore, he's settled well into being the English Professor at the front of the lecture theatre, answering questions and giving reading lists. The other members of staff gather around his office as he gathers his last things, giving him cards, hugs, and even a few tears (he never thought he'd see the day Kendall cried). He walks out that night, head held high, almost feeling a new lease of life. He gathers his suitcases in his apartment; he's only due to pay another one month's rent, and he can spare that; he turns out the lights and drops the key through the landlord's letter box.

He heads to JFK, boards a plane and starts flying home.

**Hope this chapter worked, I didn't want it to feel too rushed, but I wanted Harry to have the realisation that he couldn't stay in New York almost from the moment he gets back. I hope I manage to somewhat maintain the atmosphere of the relationship beginning to crumble, but not beyond repair. Let me know what you think, constructive criticism welcome!**


	8. I'd rather be there next to you

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Spoilers: Some big ones, and I will get to the happening of Greater Love eventually.**

**Things are going to start getting a lot happier, now.**

**I'm off to Florence for a few days tomorrow, so there won't be an update until possibly next Tuesday... Stick with me, please!**

_**I'd rather be there next to you**_

He walks into the Lyell Centre, where she's sat at the desk that was never really his from the moment she came into his life, and for a minute she's stunned into silence, staring up at him like he's something that shouldn't be there – and he sort of is, now. Something out of place. He sinks into a spare chair and scoots it across the room to her, a smile creeping onto his lips, enhanced by the shock still freezing her expression.

"I'm home." He breathes, and she actually frowns slightly, as if she can't make sense of the situation. "I'm actually home. For good."

Now she looks even more confused, if that's possible.

"What?" she asks, and her voice is shaky, and he can almost hear fear in her voice. She takes his hand and starts dragging him through to the office that was Leo's, the door swinging closed behind them.

"Say what you were saying again, Harry." She breathes, and the fear's still there, but she sounds as if she feels safer. "Tell me I'm not going mad."

He smiles, and reaches out and cups her cheek, lightly. She leans, almost imperceptibly, into his hand, closing her eyes, just for a second.

"I'm home, Nikki. I've come home."

When she looks up at him, her eyes are full of tears. They start rolling down her cheeks, and suddenly everything that's happened and is happening is catching up with him, and he reverts straight into his default, panic mode. Humour.

"That wasn't the response I was really looking for…" he laughs, but his words fall flat. She puts her hand over his on her cheek, and then takes his other hand as well, stepping slightly closer to him

"I was plucking up the courage to ring you and tell you I can't go on like this, Harry…" she shakes her head at herself. "… I wasn't going to be able to do this anymore, with you in New York… I kept meaning to ring to say that, but I just couldn't bring myself to…"

He doesn't say anything. Fear's gripping his insides, holding them in a crush, because all of a sudden the one thing he'd thought (and maybe he'd been overconfident, maybe he hadn't been thinking straight) was solid, was real, was permanent, suddenly she was showing him, in a sense, how it was only hanging on by a thread really, and she could cut it with such ease. He can't breathe, because everything's about to explode.

She presses her lips against his, then, tentatively. And then she smiles, and he's not sure he's seen a smile on her lips since Leo died, so he can't help feeling proud about that. "But now you're home."

Relief floods him with the same vigour fear had done a moment ago.

"But now I'm home."

* * *

He gets a couple of coffees and sits in the chair opposite her desk, fiddling with things and humming to himself, letting her work out the rest of her shift. When she's finally finished, he boldly takes her hand as they walk through the Lyell, and she drives them both home, in something of a companionable silence, as if there aren't quite any words, just yet.

They wordlessly take seats in her lounge, and all of a sudden the silence barrier breaks, and it's all about practicalities.

"I'm getting some temp work, and I'll be looking for something to crop up locally, but it could take some time. I'll have to be flitting about all over the country for a bit, but it's-"

She raises an eyebrow. "A darn sight closer than New York?"

He gives her a small, almost sad, smile. "I'm sorry, Nikki. I shouldn't have gone. Or I shouldn't have asked you to wait for me. It's too much to ask, something like that… you didn't deserve having to try and stay with me, from so far away…"

She shakes her head, a tiny smile on her lips. "It wasn't though, really, Harry…. You can ask me anything… you've been able to ask me anything for longer than you know…"

There's silence for a moment, and he looks at her, trying to judge whether she really means what he thinks she means.

If Leo's death has taught him anything, it's never to waste another moment. Never to let a moment pass you by.

He takes a deep breath. "Marry me, then, Nikki?"

There's that shock dancing across her face again. "What?"

He chuckles, sounding somewhere between very nervous and very drunk. "That's not usually the answer people are looking for, when they ask a question like that, Nikki…"

"I-" she stutters, as if her brain can't quite make sense of what he's asking her, how quickly it all seems to have escalated, the entire situation. The fear starts to grip him again. The doubts are seeping through cracks in his mind, and suddenly they're everywhere, suddenly they're almost taunting him. He realises, too late to do anything about it, that he could be about to destroy everything left in his life he holds dear, other than his mother. He could be about to ruin everything, throw away everything he's just salvaged in a near catastrophic wreckage.

"Ask me again." She whispers then, as if the silence has gotten too heavy on her shoulders as well. She gives him a little smile, more nervous than any he's seen. "I'm sorry, I freaked, I didn't really understand what you were saying… Ask me again."

And he bites his lip slightly, sends a prayer that she's not taunting him to any God that might be listening, and takes her hand. It's cold and clammy in his, but he doesn't think on it. He slides off the sofa and rests on one knee on her cream carpet, his heart thudding. "Marry me, Nikki?"

There are tears in her eyes again, now, but they're somehow different tears. Her smiles widens slightly, and she gives him a tiny nod. "Yes." She breathes, sounding as if she doesn't quite believe herself. "Yes. I'll marry you."

He presses his lips roughly against hers, and feels a fire heating in his belly. Apparently the same thing's happening to her, because suddenly she's leaning forward into him, her hands are finding every contour of his body, buttons are slipping open and breathing's getting all the more difficult.

* * *

He lays between her sheets, Nikki laying on her front just next to him, propping her head up on her right hand and really smiling at him, like he hasn't seen in weeks.

"We'll have to get you a ring." He muses, twirling a blonde curl around his finger, still feeling like he's in a slightly surreal world.

"I'm going to marry you." She states, in some sort of disbelief, and he's not quite sure if it's disbelief at herself, or at him, or at everything that's been happening to her, these last weeks.

He can't help the wide grin on his face as he wraps her in his arms and lets her rest her head on his shoulder, running his fingers through the curls.

There's a sudden and brief wave of guilt, then, because Leo's just died, really, he's completely unemployed in that moment, and he hasn't even rung to tell his mother yet that he's back in the UK for good (and that will definitely get him very told off), let alone that he's engaged. Yet he doesn't think he's ever been this happy. The one woman he's ever loved quite this much is in his arms, she's smiling again (and for a time he hadn't known if that was going to be possible), and she's going to marry him. He's not really in a place in his life where he should be this happy, but he can't help it.

The broken, roughly cut pieces of the puzzle, pieces created by disasters, jobs on other continents and untimely deaths, are slowly slotting back together.

**Hope you enjoyed, and hope, after possibly making you all cry a few chapters back, I've made you squee!**

**It would be very much appreciated if you could drop me a few lines on what you think of this chapter/the whole fic so far, positive or critical (preferably constructively!)**


	9. We're right in the heart of it

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Spoilers: Greater Love :(**

**I'm back from my travels! Hope everything's still going as you like it, thanks to the reviewers that are still sticking around!**

_**We're right in the heart of it**_

The following morning, Harry knocks on his mother's door, and the expression on her face for a moment is as if she's seen a ghost.

"You didn't tell me you were heading home this quickly, Harry." She breathes, colour returning to her cheeks. "Come in. I'll put the kettle on."

She's still in her dressing gown, and he supposes, to be fair to her, it is only nine on a Sunday morning.

"I'm home, Mum."

She frowns at him slightly as she puts the kettle onto boil, as if she's worried he might either be drunk or have finally cracked.

"I can see that, love."

He gives her a little smile, then. "No, I'm home. As in I'm not going back to New York. I worked out my notice, I'm home. I'm living with Nikki right now, but we'll probably look into getting a slightly bigger place when I can get a permanent job…"

A single, large, round tear appears in his mother's eye. "You mean all that?"

He nods, suddenly feeling like the schoolboy of ten that came home to tell his parents he'd been made the house captain in primary school.

She wraps her arms round him quite suddenly and roughly, and certainly not entirely true to usual Anne behaviour, but he supposes everyone gets some sort of extenuating circumstances for normality.

"You and Nikki are still serious then?" she has a slightly bewildered expression on her face. "I'll be honest with you, Harry, I didn't think anyone could survive being that far apart, even you two…"

He suddenly looks slightly bashful.

"That's the other thing I came here to tell you, Mum. Don't get mad at me, I always thought I'd plan it, I always thought it would be some beautiful, well thought out, romantic moment, from forever, whoever I was going to propose to, but it just sort of happened." There's a grin splitting Anne's face, as wide as any he's ever seen. "Nikki and I are getting married."

She bursts into floods of tears at that, the huge smile remaining fixed on her face.

When she's finally gathered herself, got her breathing back under control, he finds his voice again. "There's something I want to ask you…"

* * *

They don't tell anyone else for a few days. It seems, to both of them, almost like they're committing some sort of crime, being this happy, being this forward thinking, planning this much for the future, when a life's just been cut short so early. And not just any life, either. A life of a great deal of value.

Nikki tells Clarissa first, hoping she'll be able to come up with a way to tell Jack, who's been struggling under the surface with everything that happened in Afghanistan, only weeks ago, and with being polite and civil to the new boss at the Lyell Centre, a Thomas Chamberlain. She leans on the side opposite where Clarissa is looking at something under a microscope, and doesn't say anything, waits for the other woman to look up.

"What?" Clarissa asks, "Spit it out."

"Don't… please don't judge me, judge us, I know this isn't the time for it, I-"

"Nikki." Clarissa cuts her off. "The only thing I'm judging right now is your inability to tell me whatever you're trying to say…"

Nikki gives her a slight smile, and bites the bullet. "Harry asked me to marry him."

Clarissa, a smile breaking across her face, raises an eyebrow. "And you said yes, I'm assuming, given the look on your face?"

Nikki nods vehemently, smiling slightly wider. "I know it's not the time, it couldn't be any less the right time really, I just..."

Clarissa shakes her head, almost rolling her eyes. "You're allowed to be happy, Nikki. Shit happens, and everyone's devastated, and will always be devastated about that one thing, but you're allowed to be happy, as well."

When Nikki doesn't respond with anything, she sighs slightly, and looks up at her friend. "I hate to say something like this, it's so much a cliché, but Leo would have wanted you to be happy, wouldn't he? He always wanted you happy, you were like his surrogate daughter… Jack and I could never quite wrap our heads round you two…"

And Nikki bursts into tears, because that observation from someone who hadn't even known them for a year before Leo died, that sums it up better than she ever could, even to herself.

* * *

When she gets home, she puts the kettle on, checking the time, wondering what time Harry will be let out. He's working his first day, with the Essex police force, as she doesn't know what time he'll be allowed out, let alone what time he'll get back. If he hits rush hour traffic on the motorway… she runs a hand through her hair, sighing. She needs to adjust to having him right here, always. And it's going to take a lot of adjusting.

He doesn't get in until gone eight, in the end, and he looks like he's run a marathon, he appear so tired. She wordlessly presses a kiss to his lips and turns up the oven. He sinks into a chair at the kitchen table, taking a deep breath, and she's been able to read him so well for so long, that's the moment she realises there's something other than exhaustion there. She frowns slightly, her insecure, teenage girl mentality wondering suddenly if he's realised he regrets his sudden and unplanned proposal, and wants to take it back.

There's a moment of silence, before he reaches out and takes one of her hands.

"We haven't done anything the right way round, ever, have we?" he gives a little laugh, turning his eyes up to hers. "But we make it work, don't we? So we've been engaged four days, Nikki, and we've hardly told anyone, and we haven't really done anything about thinking about how we're going to do it, where we're going to do it, and…" he trails off, giving her another small smile, and drawing something from his pocket. "I got this from my mum. She used to wear it on a chain around her neck, for as long as I can remember. It belonged to her grandmother… her grandfather died at the Battle of the Somme, they never got married… he left her with a baby on the way, without a husband, which in those days…" he shakes his head at himself, chuckling. "Sorry. That's not very romantic. I should have just said it was a family heirloom… I thought of it, when I thought I needed to get you a ring, because I always thought it was too small for anyone… and you've got such tiny fingers…" he shrugs slightly, shaking his head again. "I've done this all wrong. I had a thousand things planned to say, and I don't think I said any of them… This was my great grandmother's ring, Nikki. Again, will you marry me?"

All his bumbling, dissonant speech doesn't matter with that smile she gives him, and as she slips the ring onto her finger. And it's a beautiful ring, a tiny gold band, with a small diamond flanked by two even smaller sapphires.

There are tears in Nikki's eyes when she next looks at him.

"It's beautiful." She sniffs slightly, and the ring fits her finger, because after everything that's happened, they deserve something to be sickeningly perfect. "It must have cost your great-grandfather a fortune, back then."

He gives her an echo of her smile, pulling her into his arms. "Family legend is he saved up all his wages for two years to buy it, hardly lived off anything."

"And he never got to marry her." Her voice sounds sad, and almost distant.

Harry presses his lips to her forehead, tucking a blonde curl behind her ear. "But I get to marry you. After everything, I still get to marry you."

**I'm back from my travels! Would love to hear what you think of this chapter!**


	10. Love is what you put into it

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Thanks for the reviews! Always appreciative of your feedback :)**

_**Love is what you put into it**_

The next months are tough, but they were always going to be tough. Harry seems to be in her flat for a few days, and then away someplace else in the country for a brief period, working, anything up to a week. And if it's far enough away, as most of the places seem to be, he's not in her bed for a few nights either, and she doesn't think that's something she could get used to. She wakes up in a cold sweat more than once, for moments unable to comprehend the way the world is right now, unable to catch up with everything that's really happening. In those moments, Harry's still in New York.

But then, when Harry's still in New York, everything's still somewhat normal, and Leo's still there, the constant, ever-present friend, and in her awakening moments, sure, that Harry's nearer to home and going to marry her seeps into her consciousness, but also the fact that everything's changed and she's never going to talk to Leo ever again comes crashing down around her.

The first time she tells Harry about this, he tells her to ring him, if she wakes up like that. She shakes her head and refuses – no one wants someone ringing you in the middle of the night for anything other than an emergency – but then it's happened one time too many, and she finds herself ringing him.

"Dr Cunningham." He answers blearily, and a wave of guilt hits her, because he sounds like he'd been sleeping deeply.

"Harry, it's me."

She can almost see his eyes open slightly more widely, suddenly appear more awake.

"It's ok, I'm here." He murmurs, knowing exactly what she's going through, even if she can't really find the words for it.

"I'm not even managing to get to sleep anymore. I… I just… I can't stop _thinking._"

He chuckles slightly at her choice of words. "Too much brain, that's your problem. Too much thinking."

She smiles at him slightly, feeling all the more at ease, purely at the sound of his voice.

"I'm sorry for waking you up, Harry. I just… you said-"

"Sleep's overrated." He muses, making her laugh a little. "Let's talk about something else. Let's plan this wedding."

She's stunned into silence for a moment, and he takes the opportunity to make a jibe. "You remember that, don't you? You're going to be the centre of attention all weekend, and you'll walk down the aisle to The Final Countdown and-"

Nikki sniggers. "I'm not walking down the aisle to The Final Countdown!"

He sighs, "But it would be so appropriate, it sort of is your final countdown..."

She rolls her eyes to herself, a smile on her face. "Yes, but I want it traditional, Harry. Like the old fashioned church wedding I was dreaming about when I was little…"

His voice softens slightly as his heart swells. "You'll have your dream wedding, Nikki. We'll make your dream wedding…"

* * *

The next time she rings, it's 3:17am.

"Hey." He breathes, sounding wide awake, having been in control of his consciousness enough to check the caller ID.

She sniffs, loudly. "Leo was supposed to be there, Harry. He was going to be your best man, and have the first father-daughter dance with me, and… he was supposed to be there."

"Shhh. It's alright." He's been half expecting this for weeks. Neither of them can deny the weight Leo's absence is putting on their wedding plans.

"It's not alright though, is it, Harry? That someone who was supposed to be such a massive part of the whole thing isn't going to be there at all…"

There's silence for a moment, and it sounds like Harry thinking.

"He could be there." He finally replies.

Rage courses through her, then, because that doesn't make any sense. It's either patronising, like a parent talking to a child about their first dead pet, or it's a terribly placed start to one of his jokes. "What?" she spits.

"We could get married in Sheffield. In the church… the church next to the graveyard."

She shakes her head to herself, but a little seed of the brilliance of the idea has already planted itself in her mind. "People wouldn't come all the way up there, Harry. It's too much to ask."

"Everyone that matters would. And it was a nice church, and we saw that lovely stately home hotel place down the road on the way out, do you remember?"

"I hardly remember anything about that day, Harry."

"Well, there was a big old stately home just along the road, with lovely grounds… it would be lovely under a marquee in summer, Niks… we could do this, you know we could."

"We could?" she sounds almost scared.

"If you wanted to, if you thought… if you think it would be right… We could do anything."

There's another long silence, as if she's weighing up two opposing halves of one of the most major decisions of her life. When she speaks, although quiet, her voice sounds somehow strong.

"I guess we've chosen a summer wedding, then. We should start booking that place for next summer."

* * *

Thomas Chamberlain isn't all that bad really, though Nikki doesn't want to like him. He's in Leo's chair, at Leo's desk, in Leo's office, seemingly _too soon, _though she's sure anytime would be too soon. Jack seems to be taking it harder than she is, even, adjusting to the new man, which is odd, because she was working behind and with Leo for years, and Jack hadn't even been a year, but she supposes something in it is Jack's general inability to labour under anyone's superiority.

The weeks seem to slip between her fingers, a repeating cycle: Harry's arms around her for a few days, followed by Harry's faraway-sounding voice at the end of a phone line for another few days.

She's booked the stately home not far from the church Leo's funeral was held, for a weekend in the middle of August, and they continue with further wedding planning over the phone, usually in the early hours of the morning. Type of flowers, music, entertainment at the reception, they are all sorted at a time when they should both have been asleep.

If she thinks about it too hard, she struggles with the thought of going back in that church where she said her goodbyes to Leo. But she can't even bring herself to talk to Harry about it, because it seemed like such a lovely suggestion when Harry made it to her, all for her, and now it just seems to be getting darker and more putrid with time, like a rotting carcass.

She doesn't say anything about it to him until she's had a few too many glasses of wine at a work function, and she still finds it necessary to ring him in the early hours.

"Dr Cunningham." He answers blearily. They've both started sleeping better, their late night conversations have seemed to fade.

"It's me!" she shouts, giggling, and if she'd been less tipsy, she'd have imagined his eye-roll.

"You're drunk, Nikki. Go to bed."

She frowns. "I am perfectly sober, thank you." She pauses for a moment, considering. "And I love you. I really love you."

He can't help but smile at that. "And I love you too. Now, go to bed."

All of a sudden, there are tears in her voice, her throat starts catching on every word. "I don't know if I can do it, Harry. I don't know if I can walk down the aisle in that church… all I can see is hundreds of people dressed in black, and Leo's coffin, and Leo never being there anymore…"

He takes a deep breath. He didn't see this coming, but he can see where she's coming from, now. "We don't have to. We can speak to the vicar, ask him to marry us in Bramall House… we've got the function rooms all day…"

There's a brief silence. "You'd do that, for me?"

He smiles again, hearing the colour returning to her voice. "I'd do anything for you, Nikki, don't you know that by now?"

"I'd like that then."  
"You can go and see Leo in the morning, but it'll be separate. It'll make the wedding less… bleak…"

It all seems to make sense.

* * *

The next time he rings her, this time from Cheltenham, it's not in the middle of the night. It's a Saturday, he's doing some out-of-hours temp work, and she's at home.

"I'm coming home, Nikki." His voice sounds rich, and full of a new lease of life.

"What?"

"I didn't tell you, I didn't want to get your hopes up. But there was a vacancy for a lecturer in criminal pathology at Kings College…. And I applied… and for some reason, they've picked me. I got the job."

"Kings College London?"

He rolls his eyes, and sarcasm lacing his tone, returns: "No. Kings College Timbuktu. I'm coming home. As of January, I start working only a few miles away from home…"

She doesn't know what to say for a moment. She's waiting for there to be a catch, there's always a catch.

Harry starts talking again when she doesn't say anything.

"Maybe we should do something about home, Nikki. Shall we start looking for a place? You know, a slightly bigger place, for the two of us?" he asks, a sudden nervousness coursing through his body, as if he fears her answer for a second.

"And for a family, one day?" It's so quiet he's not even sure he's heard it, but it would be unspoken if she hadn't said anything. He finds a grin splitting his face.

"And for a family."

**Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Would love to hear what you think. Only two chapters to go now!**


	11. I will be there every step of the way

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Here's the wedding… thanks for all your feedback the whole way through, it's been brilliant!**

_**I will be there every step of the way**_

Before she knows it, it's the morning of the wedding. Things have gone swimmingly, these last months, and they've been house-hunting, but without any success, yet. But despite everything that's happened in the last year that's taught them they don't have all the time in the world, when it comes to finding a perfect house, they feel like they do. Harry's moved into Nikki's flat like he was never so many thousands of miles away, and they're suddenly strangely _domestic. _Like they were always meant to be here, together, going somewhere.

The job at Kings College has been hard, has been stressful, and Nikki's been in as many life-threatening situations as ever with Jack and Clarissa and this Thomas Chamberlain (who she might even be starting to like), but that hasn't darkened any of it.

It's like they've finally found their _place, _where they were always supposed to be.

So on the morning of the wedding, in the early hours – she's been staying in a suite in Bramall Hall with Jack and Clarissa, she'd said goodbye to Harry the night before – she walks over the road and up the hill to the graveyard, and sits on the ground in front of Leo's grave, watching the sunrise, shivering slightly in the early morning chill.

"I'm marrying him, Leo." She breathes, wondering if it'll feel completely ridiculous talking to someone who's been dead for more than a year, now. It doesn't, however, so she keeps talking. She laughs lightly, "But I guess you always knew I would, if he asked… I don't know if you ever knew if he was going ask, mind you, I don't know if you thought he'd get his act together in the end or not… You were probably the one that thought he was the most ridiculous, going to New York…"

She finds a tear rolling down her cheek she hadn't been planning. This is supposed to be positive, this is supposed to be like the heart-to-heart with a parent on the morning of a wedding. But she doesn't have anyone to have this conversation with.

She shrugs to herself, roughly wiping her hand under her eyes, pushing the tear away. "I think what happened to you brought him back, Leo. What you did brought him back to me, had him decide it was time to take this somewhere…" she gives a tiny smile, as simultaneously a few tears run down her cheeks. "You always looked out for me, and it was like you were still looking out for me…"

There's silence for a few moments as she stares at two falcons swooping through the clear sky.

"I would have liked you to have been here today, Leo. You would have been Harry's best man, and I would have asked you to walk me down the aisle… It wouldn't have been conventional, but when have Harry and I ever been conventional? You should have been here, today. I need you here."

Suddenly, there's a hand on her shoulder, and it doesn't make her jump, she just puts her own cold hand over it, lacing the fingers. There's only one person it can be.

"You're not supposed to see me today until the altar, Harry. You're breaking all the rules."

"When have we ever been conventional?" he echoes, but there's a catch in his voice, and when she looks up there are tears in his eyes. She leans against him slightly, taking a deep breath.

"He should have been here, Harry." She whispers, "For you as much as for me. He should have been here."

Harry shakes his head slightly, squeezing her hand. "He would have wanted to be here, Niks. He's probably up there somewhere, right now, shaking his head disapprovingly at everything we're doing wrong." He gives her a tiny smile. "He doesn't know why on earth we're getting married up here, for him, considering he can't make it to the ceremony anyway; he thinks we should have got on with it a lot quicker after we decided we were going to, he doesn't trust us not to find some other kind of trauma if we leave it too long; he's very disapproving of us both being out so early in the morning, and as for seeing each other-"

"I love you." She cuts him off, his words bringing both tears to her eyes and a huge smile to her face.

"Jolly good." He replies, smiling. "Seems like you've made the right decision on what you're doing this afternoon, then."

* * *

She walks down the aisle by herself, and she struggles to make eye contact with Harry in those few moments, because for both of them, Leo's somehow beside her. Both their hands are shaking at the altar, with a mixture of excitement and some sort of inexplicable fear at entering into what feels like the final stage of their lives, and there's suddenly so much more to lose.

Suddenly, they're signing papers, and she's Dr Nikki Cunningham, and in that moment, it seems impossible that that's anything more than her wildest dream. Because it was, for so long.

Harry's best man, an old friend from uni, Kyle Sommers, is making the conventional best man speech, making everyone laugh, with anecdotes about Harry's appalling behaviour at university, and the expected words about how he's never known Harry as invested in anything as he is with Nikki.

_But when have we ever been conventional? _she thinks, wishing desperately for a second the poor man (who's doing a very good job) could be Leo, if just for a moment.

When her wishes and prayers aren't answered by the end of the speech, and everyone toasts the happy couple, she just can't leave it there. She stands up, clinking her fish knife against the side of her glass, a lump in her throat but a strength in her voice she didn't know she had within herself.

"I've just got a few words to say, for the man that would have walked me down the aisle. The man that would have had that second dance with me, a little later in the evening. And I'm not talking about my father." She gives a little smile, and a shrug. "I'm not even sure my father would have been here. I'm talking about Leo Dalton."

Harry's hand seems to have found its way into hers without her even noticing. She squeezes back, and keeps talking. "He was like a father to me, when my own wasn't. And he did something to fill that gap that had been empty for so long for Harry, as well." She notices Anne giving a tiny, solemn nod. "I'm not making this into another eulogy, because I read his eulogy just down the road from here in the Spring of last year. But he was taken from us far too young, and he died for a lot of other people. And he would have liked to have been here." She takes a deep breath. "So I would like us all to raise our glasses to Leo Dalton, and everything he should have been, here, tonight…"

There's hardly a dry eye in the room as hundreds of glasses raise in a silent, sincere toast.

* * *

Their first dance, in the end, after weeks of conversations and arguments about choice of music, is to Michael Buble's _Home. _Because the lyrics seem to make some sort of sense. And as they're swaying to 'I'm just too far from where you are' and 'I miss you, you know' he wraps his arms even tighter around her, and pulls her head closer to his, so close he can murmur in her ear.

As the song ends with 'I'm coming back home', he whispers, " I realise that was where I went wrong, going to New York. Because home's not a place, Nikki. Home's where you are."

**I hope this chapter lived up to all your expectations! Please leave a review, let me know how I've done. There's just an epilogue to end this story now, but thanks for all your support, the whole way along!**


	12. Epilogue:Just know that I'm already home

**A HALF OF THE WHOLE**

**H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work. **

**Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.**

**Spoilers: Some big ones, and I will get to the happening of Greater Love eventually.**

**Sorry you all had to wait so long for the epilogue! I haven't got any internet in my new student house, I'm currently posting this from the Costa Coffee up the road! Thanks for all your feedback, especially those of you that have been there the whole way through, it really is extremely valued!**

_**Epilogue: Just know that I'm already home**_

Six months pass, as if she hasn't even blinked.

They went to Barcelona for their honeymoon for two weeks, starting a few days after the wedding. They stayed in a tiny hotel on one of the side streets, and they were the only guests that weren't Spanish, and they sat down the side streets and drank Spanish wine and ate olives and traditionally cooked Spanish food and felt _local._

It was over a freshly fried seafood paella Nikki brought up the issue that had been on her mind for weeks, since before the wedding, since he'd moved back to London and they'd started to look for a house, and the word 'family' had entered their minds.

"You think we should start thinking about a family, once we find the house?" she had whispered, butterflies suddenly in her stomach, her mouth feeling dry.

Harry didn't respond for a moment, and the fear had started to take root in her gut. She shouldn't have brought it up now, she shouldn't have thrown it at him so unexpectedly like that, they'd only been married six days, for heaven's sake, she should have given him time…

"If you want to, Nikki, I think we should…"

But she hadn't been expecting anything to come of it this quickly. They'd found a house little over a month after they'd got home and started looking again, all that wedding planning behind them. A four bedroomed house with a big garden on the outskirts of Ealing, a reasonable commuting distance from work for both of them, but far enough away to seem more possible to settle in.

And now she's clutching a short plastic pregnancy test in her right hand in the en-suite, and she can't quite understand the plus sign. Because they haven't been really trying, yet, they've been waiting to settle properly in the house, they've been waiting for the time to _feel right. _And now here it is, the evidence that the time didn't need to feel right, everything didn't need to have been completely planned.

She just keeps staring at it for a time, and then she hears Harry coming through the front door, having been to the local bakery to see what he could find for his mother's birthday tomorrow.

She steps out of the bathroom, the test still in her hand, a sudden confidence she doesn't really recognise slipping over her.

She stands at the top of the stairs, as Harry removes his coat and boots.

"We're going to really have to start being responsible adults now." She murmurs, and he looks up at her, frowning in confusion. She slips down the stairs and presents the pregnancy test to him, unable to quell the smile spreading on her face.

The grin splitting across his is reward enough.

* * *

He runs his fingers gently over the bump encasing the walnut – they've started calling baby Cunningham _the walnut, _ever since at one of the scans they were told that was roughly the size of the baby. The baby's much bigger than a walnut now, but the name seems to have stuck. He's taken to gently running his fingers over the curvature of the bump, these last few months since there's been something palpable there, since there's actually been a bump.

They're both some sort of strange combination of excited like children on Christmas morning, and terrified beyond belief at the responsibility that's soon going to be all theirs. They can't quite put it into words, and they don't need to put it into words with each other. Naively, in a way, neither of them think any other soon-to-be parents can possibly have felt _just like this._

"What's your name, Walnut?" Harry whispers, having his fingers dance lightly over her belly. "You're coming home with us in about six weeks. You'll be needing a name then."

They decided not to find out the sex of the baby, though both of them think they saw something that looked remarkably like a penis on the scan. They're both quite a few years out of practice now on pregnancy diagnosis, and they were both promising not to look in too much detail at the ultrasound picture, so neither of them say anything. For now, the Walnut's just a walnut.

"Oliver." Nikki breathes, tilting her slightly to the side, as if considering.

"George."

"I don't like that. It's too… old man…"

Harry chuckles, and she realises with a jolt she's given him an excuse to behave like a child and turn this all into one huge joke, right now.

"Albert. Brian." He punctuates the increasingly ridiculous names with kisses up over her belly, between her breasts, and up her throat. "Colin. Kenneth. Wilfred. Edwin. Ethelred…" his mouth connects with hers after Ethelred, his tongue dancing against hers, the heat rising suddenly in her belly, despite being past the stage in her pregnancy where her hormones were driving them both to exhaustion in bed at night (and sometimes in the afternoon, a fair few times first thing in the morning, and even one time in the kitchen).

He pulls away from her then, a wide, bordering on ridiculous grin across his face.

"I've got it." He announces triumphantly, kissing her briefly, then returning to barely an inch away. "Harold. Harry for short."

She swats him playfully before pulling him back to her.

* * *

It's a week after that that she starts bleeding, and she tries for a few moments to shout for Harry from the bathroom, but nothing seems to want to come out of her mouth. It's like fear's silencing her. It's not until he asks her if she's alright she manages something.

"Come in here." She breathes, and he comes barging through the door, and she watches the fear descending on his face as he sees what's happening.

There's so much blood he calls an ambulance.

As they're loading her in, telling Harry he's done exactly the right thing in ringing them, in that sickening yet comforting patronising manner paramedics seem to have, regardless of what you know.

"_Nikki Cunningham, 41. 35 weeks pregnant, no previous abnormalities. Sudden significant blood loss."_

The words might as well be in another language. She can't really hear them. She takes Harry's hand as the ambulance speeds towards the hospital, and she thinks about everything she's already lost, especially in these last few years, and everything she might be about to lose. Suddenly, this baby is everything. Despite being a person she's never really met yet, despite not even having a name beyond Walnut, despite not definitely being a boy, this baby's everything. So much more than anything else she's ever lost.

She can't breathe.

There's a doctor saying something to her about a great loss of blood, dangerous circumstances and inducing premature labour, but she doesn't translate. Not really.

She doesn't really realise that everything's happening now until she feels the first contraction, and she's never experienced any pain quite like it.

* * *

She's been pushing for hours. The doctors have told him he doesn't need to be worried, the bleeding's stopped and they've found a foetal heart rate after the induction of labour, but of course he can't help worrying.

She's screaming and cursing and squeezing the life out of his hand, and he's pressing kisses to her forehead and shouting encouraging things and trying not to think too hard about how scared he is.

He has a moment, in those seconds, when he suddenly seems distant from the situation, almost like he's looking down on it, if only for a moment.

Nikki's his wife, she's having his baby (probably his son, though he's not telling anyone he saw anything), and he doesn't think, in that moment, he could be happier.

He never thought they'd really get here. He supposes the only person that did was Leo.

Her fingers grip around his hand again, and he can't even think. She's pushing the head out, and he's almost a father.

* * *

In a hot, slippery rush, it's all over. The midwives are fanning around suddenly, and someone's saying "it's a boy" (though they both knew that already, really) and for a long, horrible moment, there's silence.

And then the harsh wails of a newborn fill the air, and she can't help the tears that are sliding down her cheeks. A midwife brings the baby over, tucked in a blue blanket, and he's tiny, with a feathery sprinkling of blond hair.

"You can have a quick hold if you want, love. But then we need to get him up to an incubator, at least for a few nights. He's very small." The midwife passes Nikki the baby casually, as if she does it every day. As if she holds something that precious every day.

"Joshua." Nikki breathes at the tiny little human in her arms, and it sounds perfect, like it's always been the name of this miniature person, like there never needed to be any discussion at all.

"Joshua Leo." Harry returns, a slight choke in his voice, a slight lump in his throat.

Nikki can only nod in response, pressing her lips to the little baby's head.

"He's perfect." She looks up at Harry through tear filled eyes. "He's ours."

Then the midwife's taking Joshua off them and promising she'll report back with exactly which incubator he's in once she's placed him, but telling them both they ought to get some rest – they're not going to get much these next few weeks, next few months, next few years.

Nikki's loathe to let him out of her eyesight, that completely surreal person that grew inside her, is exactly half her and half Harry, and has starting filling a hole she didn't even know she had. But they both know he needs a little extra help, he's in good hands, so they watch the midwife carry him away, almost mournfully.

She starts crying when he's gone, tiny, overwhelmed tears, and Harry puts his arms around her and lets her bury her head in his shoulders, lets her tears soak through the fabric.

"We made a tiny little human being." He breathes, as if he can't quite wrap his head around it.

"We did." She whispers, and leans her forehead against his. "Thank you." She kisses him lightly. "You'd better go and ring your Mum. And if you could let Jack know…"

He kisses her again, briefly. "Alright. Try and get some sleep, Nikki. You're tired."

"More than you'll ever know." She laughs, curling a finger through his hair. "Go on. I'll see you when I wake."

* * *

When he returns to the little room, she's sound asleep in her bed. His mother was hardly understandable, she'd been so full of excitement, and Jack had tried to hide it, but Harry's pretty sure he had a lump in his throat, from the tone of his voice.

As he presses a kiss to his wife's head and settles into the arm chair beside her bed, he looks up at the clock. Somewhere between the induction, the hours of labour and their brief tearful meeting, the time's made its way to 2:45. It's been September 15th for nearly three hours. Strangely enough, Joshua Leo Cunningham is always going to share a birthday with Leo Dalton.

That's got to mean something.

FINIS

**That's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed the epilogue and liked how I ended it! (I couldn't find Leo's birthday anywhere, I did look, so please excuse me if I missed something and got it wrong)**

**To those of you who have reviewed, however many times along the way, thank you so much for your feedback! It means a lot, and never fails to make me smile! You've been (as usual) a brilliant bunch!**

**Sorry for the lengthy wait you had to endure waiting for the epilogue, blame new student housing and a disorganised roommate not sorting out the internet in time for our move in!**

**Go on, leave one last review! You know you want to! (I might be able to be persuaded to post occasional oneshots on their family in this canon, if you're all nice)**


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